It’s been so long since I’ve posted, even the dear Michelle sent me an email to check I was ok, how kind is that! Thanks so much Michelle.

We’ve had loads going on and there just hasn’t been time for blogging or creating. We had to completely move out of our home for a month so Fletchers could send builders and decorators in to repair earthquake damage. Unfortunately the week of us moving out Grace suffered a febrile convulsion and was taken to hospital by ambulance and after many tests they found she had picked up a nasty dose of influenza which I later caught. It was one of those weeks where you really wonder what more could go wrong, but we got through it and Grace was fine after the flu disappeared. Whilst recovering from the flu myself we moved out then had to work with tradesmen and sort out paint colours for the entire house and other details, what a mission that was! As much as we’re happy to have it all done and it looks great, we’ve learnt tradesmen are not the best communicators!

I’ve been making the most of us emptying our house and have been sorting through everything. I’ve sorted  and re arranged most things so they work better and I think I’m getting there. The house is better to tidy and it’s much easier to keep on top of housework so I have more time for fun with Grace. Talking of Grace we moved her into my scrap room and I’m taking her old room for my creative stuff. She’s now in a king single bed and her old room would have been taken over by it. I have to do a major clean out and sort of my craft stuff as the room I now have is smaller but I’ve accumulated so much it shouldn’t be hard to move on some supplies to other scrappers. I’ll post some photo of our room makeovers when I get a little more sorted.

Every weekend lately has been either moving in or moving out, packing or unpacking and spring cleaning the house, sorting our stuff and cleaning the garden ready for summer. Now we’re back home and feeling settled we named this past weekend “Labour free” weekend in our house as we wanted to enjoy some down time. We did what we always do when we want to enjoy life, we entertain! It was wonderful, we had family over for homemade pizza on Friday night, some friend’s and their families over the for first BBQ of the season and the kids had a ball playing in the sun together and then we finished the weekend with a lovely morning tea outside with our coffee group families. It was just what we needed and was over too soon, we’re looking forward to our stay-cation over Christmas!

In September we celebrated Father’s Day and this year Grace was really into celebrating her wonderful Dad. We took some photos and made a cool “DAD” frame for Craig’s office, bought copious amounts of lollies for him (he’s a sugar fiend!) and Grace made a very cute no.1 dad card with her craft things and lot’s of glitter glue. We cooked a delicious breakfast of French toast, bacon, bananas and maple syrup, enjoyed a visit to the park for lunch and then dinner with family at night. Father’s day this year signified a special date for those of us in Christchurch, it was the year anniversary of the September 4th earthquake where our lives began getting shaken literally about. It has been a year of  emotional up’s and downs and we wanted to celebrate our families strength through it all. As I said we had some family for dinner and then as the Lights of Hope (two large spotlights in the red zone that shine out every night until Feb 22 next year) were turned on in the central city red zone we were outside to watch and shared sparklers. It was good to be together and know that hopefully the worst if behind us and our city.

Now that life has settled back down again I hope to get back into regular creating and blogging, it won’t be so long between posts! That’s if anyone our there still reads this lol I also think I’m coming up on five years blogging in November, might have to do a few wee RAK’s.

We’ve had a busy wee weekend so far. On Friday night I got to spend the evening cropping with friends. I didn’t feel creative at all, don’t you hate when you have the time but no ideas! After some chatting and a few cuppa’s I managed to come up with a layout. It’s a layout of Miss Maddi’s 3rd birthday, I may add another single layout with some journaling and a few more photos just to tie the event together.

We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine in the vege garden on Saturday whilst getting it in ship shape condition ready for the spring planting to begin. I took a few photos around our garden, there’s not a lot of colour about at the moment but the pansy’s, budding polyanthus & daffodils and our lemon tree full of bright lemons give hope that Spring isn’t too far away… I hope!

I finally got my garlic in the ground, apparently it needs a hit of cold to get nice fat cloves so hopefully I’m not to late.We planted more broccoli, we’ve been enjoying our home grown stuff lately and it really tastes different than shop bought broccoli. In went some more broad bean and snow pea seeds, Grace and I love to pick the peas straight from the plants when they’re tiny and tender. I’ve sown loads of broad beans, not a huge fan but I saw a great recipe on Annabel Langbein’s Free Range cook show for a broad bean mash, sounds delish.

A photo of our vege garden all tidied up and ready for spring planting to begin soon.

Today we headed off to the garden centre to stock up on plants and supplies. I bought some more strawberries, we already have 20 or so plants in the vege garden but I want to have loads to harvest in summer so we bought another 18 plants today to border the flower garden. I figure it will be nice for kids to pick there own strawberries whilst at bbq’s and get togethers which we hope to have many of this coming summer.

I bought some roses to add to our collection. A  salmon pink climbing rose called “Compassion”, a rich red called “Lasting love” in memory of my grandfather (mum chose this rose for us to both grow in his memory) and a beautiful soft pink rose called “Heritage” that I just loved and the name reminded me of the heritage that has been lost in the recent earthquakes.

I’m also going to try my hand at growing some dahlia’s. I remember them vividly from my childhood, I never liked them much cause they always had earwigs hiding in them but recently I was reading Lynda Hallinan’s gardening blog (she’s the editor at large of NZ Gardener magazine) and she had these as her wedding bouquet which rekindled my interest. I’m going to start out small with six or so simple pink and white shades but if they do well next year I’ll be ordering some interesting ones for a mass of colour.

Of course we had our special wee helper enjoying getting out in the fresh air and having a ride around in the wheel barrow. I love how her face got all squished when she tried on the ear muffs..so cute! hehe

As a wee reward after our garden efforts we enjoyed some delicious cupcakes from “the cupcake collection” for afternoon tea, I was surprised as the gluten free one was the yummiest and most flavoursome.

I hope your weekend was wonderful and that the sun shined a little for you.

The lovely Janine recently organised a swap with a few ladies themed around self-care, spending time doing things for yourself. I heard about it and though it sounded like a wonderful idea. We each had to fill out a questionnaire about our likes and dislikes, what we enjoyed doing in our spare time, fave colours etc. then Janine kindly matched up with another lady to partake it the swap with.

My swapee had put that her favourite colour combo was chocolate brown and turquoise so I tried to do the swap around these colours. Then I found this butterfly quote and loved how it spoke about how they lead you to the sunny side of life and everyone needs a little sunshine!

“Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life.  And everyone deserves a little sunshine.”  ~Jeffrey Glassberg

The photos are a bit rough as they were taken at night.

I filled the turquoise box full of little treats that I got ideas for from her questionnaire and to give a range of “me time” moments.

I went for some girly DVD’s, popcorn, lollies and chocolate for a night on the couch. A turquoise mug with some of my favourite chai tea to enjoy with my homemade double chocolate chunk cookies and one of her favourite magazines. She mentioned baths were a special treat as on tank water so I wanted the next one to be even more special and added some bath salts, a bath puff, some baileys to enjoy and a ceramic flower with chocolate scented candle. I hope the little pack gives a good excuse to take time out and do some relaxing.

Then earlier in the week I got a courier delivery and was happily surprised when it was addressed to me, that hardly ever happens at our place. Some of my very own happy mail!

What a wonderful array of special treats for me, my swappee Mrs Frizz aka Michelle had been very busy filling a box full of lovely things just for me. I laughed when I read her wee card that said “ A girl can never have enough flowers” and gosh she sent me some stunning Prima ones!! She even included a sweet little lip balm for Miss Grace. I got some of the cool cardboard cake boards that have featured on her lovely layouts lately, must use them on a layout soon!

So to the darling Michelle, I send you many many hugs and thanks for such a wonderful package. You brightened my day no end! You are a true sweetie.

Also a huge thanks to Janine for organising such a wonderful swap and getting us all sorted, you’re awesome!

This past month I tried to complete all of the challenges at Scrappin Patch and for me they were challenging. The month’s theme was “Winter Wonderland” which sounds simple but I don’t have many photos of snow and certainly didn’t have any of Grace. I dug out this old photo of my sister creating snowmen with my Nana back in the 1980’s. It was a sketch challenge but also came with a colour combo. So I flipped the sketch around and found this Fancy Pants winter themed paper which worked with the colour scheme and voila!

Funnily enough a day or so after I’d got my layouts sorted Mother Nature dumped a huge load of snow on us and I now have lot’s of wonderful winter photos! lol

Then I completed this layout for the multi photo challenge. I really love this layout, I think it captures how much fun Grace had in her new gummies. The Fancy Pants paper is fab with the snow covered branches which I used kindy glitz to highlight and some dimensional magic to bring out the splashing title.

We also got challenged to do a OTP project and it was to create a little box and fill it with a gift in wintery colours with bling. I made this little box and filled it with 5 small notecards. A wonderful gift for someone special!

I created a few of these boxes as gifts, they are so super simple! You can find the instructions here.

This was for a friend’s birthday and I filled it with her favourite chocolates.

Then this one for a friend who recently had her second baby daughter and loves chocolate so I too filled this one with chocolates.

Then I made this card for Grace’s 3rd birthday, so pretty in pink.

I never shared this card but I love the colours and how it turned out for my niece Maddi’s 3rd birthday.

I’m off to crop again this weekend so hopefully I’ll have some more to share soon!

Over the weekend our wee munchkin turned 3, the last three years have flown and I have no idea how we have a three year old in the house! I love to go all out for birthdays so we started the celebrations with Grace’s fave breakfast, berry and banana pancakes. Her cousins and Auntie popped over to share there gifts and join us for breakfast. We gave her the beautiful pink dolls house with lovely pink furniture, so cute! As you can see she was a birthday princess in pink.

We baked cupcakes for her wee preschool friends and was treated to all the special things that go with having your birthday at preschool.

In the evening we had a family dinner and birthday cupcake with 3 candles. She loves the pink Barbie car and her first Barbie she got from Nana, I just know she is going to be a Barbie girl. Must dig my old ones out for her at some point.

We celebrated in style on Sunday with a fantastic “Pinktastic Tea Party”. Believe or not it was my lovely hubby’s idea to call it “Pinktastic” and it certainly was! lol

We decorated the a little table at just the right height for pre-schoolers and went mad with pink decorations. Big paper balls, balloons, streamers, cups, plates, doily’s and bunting all in pink! Even the guests made an effort to dress up in pink, so sweet!

We served a range of pink food, all delicious party food. Pink jellies with whipped cream and sprinkles, fruit kebabs with pink marshmallows, pink wafer biscuits, marshmallows, fairy bread with pink sprinkles, pink lemonade, cheerio’s and pink spotty homemade heart biscuits. The grown ups enjoyed a range of savouries and sandwiches too.

My Dad gave Grace a extra special birthday surprise (me too!) and turned up in full clown costume. This is the second year we’ve had surprise costume appearances, last year it was a friend dressed as a panda for Grace’s teddy bear’s picnic party! Wonder who might show up next year?! hehe

We played pass the parcel, quite a feat with 10 or so kids under 3 but once they got the hang of it they enjoyed seeing what was under each layer.

It was then time for Grace to blow out the candles on her pink birthday cake. I made her a strawberry cake with six shades of pink, inspired by the rainbow cakes that some to be everywhere at the moment.

The cake was quite high and large and I didn’t think the kids needed that much cake or extra sugar so made some wee cupcakes for them to enjoy. I cut the wee cupcakes toppers out on my slice, amazing how handy that gadget is when doing parties. Check out this site for the fab free printable subway art as seen in the white frame behind the cupcakes.

Then it was time to open some lovely presents, cousin Maddi was very happy to help open the pressies to see what was hiding behind the pretty paper!

Grace got some really lovely girly gifts that had much thought go into them, the super cute teal and purple scarf and hat were one of her gifts.

A wee while back I shared with you a pile of lovely pink goodies, some pink goodies that were purchased for Grace’s 3rd birthday, a Pinktastic Tea Party so I thought it was about time to share a bit more. Anyone who knows me, knows I LOVE to go mad on party planning and like to make it all come together down to the last little details.

It was Grace’s 3rd birthday last week and the party was yesterday so I’ve got loads to share but will start with the details.

After scouring the net and my new friend Pinterest (if you haven’t joined yet make sure you do, it’s a fab ideas pin board) I came up with a pretty girly pink invite design.

Another thing to sort on the party list were the goodie bags for the kids to take home after the party. I found some cute photos of doily covered brown paper bags and loved the idea so off I went. On some lovely little doilies I stamped “thanks a bunch” in pink, then I had this cute wee teapot on one of my Making Memories Slice cards so cut a bunch of them to write the names on. I punched some holes for the ribbon and voila, gift bags!

I had 12 gift bags to make up, some for boys but mostly for wee girls. I added Grace’s favourite homemade sparkly play dough, pink for the girls and turquoise for the boys with the added recipe. She plays with her play dough on a daily basis and loves it so it was a sure bet that the other kids would too!

Next I added a wee pink bag of jellybeans.

My sister kindly whipped up these wonderful crochet wool flowers (a skill I’m yet to master hehe) so I could turn them into cute little hair clips for the girls. The boys got wee windmills.

It was a production line to get them all bagged up but gosh they looked cute when they were all sitting neatly on my work table.

I’ll be back tomorrow to share more about Grace’s Pinktastic Tea Party.

I’ve been meaning to update my blog for awhile now but June has raced past in a whirlwind of coughs and colds, birthdays, sizable earthquakes, ash clouds, weekends away and a feeling of tiredness!

Where has the year gone, it’s blimmin July already and before I blink it will be half gone.

We’ve had coughs and colds hanging about for the past month or two, at any given point at least one in our family has been feeling miserable. Grace started preschool  and with it comes a range of colds but on the up side she has settled very well in between sick days and loves her time there. It was a big step but one I know she is ready for now, she has developed so much in the few weeks she’s been attending.

At the beginning of the June Craig and I were lucky enough to spend a night away in Hanmer Springs at the flash Braemar Lodge. It was our birthday treat and although we had a lovely time, one night was too rushed to really relax. Also although the decor etc. was top notch the staff and general welcome was a bit of a let down. However it was a nice night away and you have to grab these experiences when you can. I’m so glad we made the effort to enjoy the Christchurch Tram dinner last year as now post quake it will never be the same.

Craig celebrated his birthday in mid June and he even had the earth move for his special day. Christchurch literally rumbled under our feet with a 5.6 earthquake followed shortly after with a 6.3. I was in The Warehouse shopping for birthday supplies when everything began to shake like mad. I had to steady myself on shop fitting so I didn’t get thrown to the ground, it was horrible and the first time I’d been in a shop for a biggie and away from Grace. She was at preschool and thankfully was fine, the preschool handled it so but needless to say I was there as soon as possible! We still celebrated Craig’s birthday that night with a family dinner of Indian takeaways, they were still open after the days shakes, go figure!?

Another thing happening during June have been the stunning sun sets with the ash cloud hanging over us.  I managed to snap a few photos of one particularly beautiful one.

Since starting preschool Grace has found a huge fondness for play dough, so hours upon hours have been spent making all sorts of things with it. She loves having tea parties with her teddies and makes cakes and sausage rolls for them hehe.

We had another little break away during June too. We hired a home in Kaikoura and enjoyed two nights up there with my sister and her family. We visited the seal colony with the girls, checked out the few shops and took in the scenery. It was weird to be away from the many aftershocks and I still found myself jump each time a truck passed or something creaked. The more I go away however I realise I really love our home, aftershocks and all! The effort it takes to get packed and on holiday it’s sometimes more relaxing just to stay home lol

I celebrated my birthday also during June, it was a rather dismal day unfortunately. We were all sick, and the weather was freezing and it all just went to custard. I did however get some lovely flowers and few special gifts, a beautiful rainbow appeared in the afternoon and a I was entertained by a special birthday princess dancing about cheering her mummy up.

Well that was our June in a blog post! I shall not leave it that long to post again.. promise xox

Yesterday we rugged up in our coats and winter woollies and checked out the Christchurch Farmer’s market at Riccarton house. For a year or more I’ve been hearing about the market and we’ve been meaning to go but have never got there. We crazily decided to pick the coldest Saturday morning this Winter but none the less it was very enjoyable so I can only imagine how much nicer it would be on a warm summery morning.

They have loads of stalls selling only food, everything from cheeses, salami’s and delicious olives etc. to sweet chocolates, macaroon’s and cupcakes.

I’d heard about Posh Porridge from another blog and wanted to try it. I love porridge and the posh spin they put on it was really appealing!

Grace and I shared some piping hot porridge with blackcurrant and apple, vanilla bean custard and oaty crumble. It was delish! Another favourite I’ve heard is their honey poached pears with gingernut crumble or banana, toffee sauce and toasted almonds!

I really love the idea of porridge with yummy desert like toppings so I made some almond crumble mix, some honey and lemon poached pears and boysenberry and apple coulis so Grace and I can replicate it at home each morning, We’ll certainly be heading back to sample some other flavours and delights at the Saturday market but it will be cool to spruce up boring porridge.

We bought some lovely little orange pumpkins and a crisp white cauliflower which I’ll make into some warming winter soup. We sampled some pakoras (onion bhaji) too, another thing I hope to make some of as Grace loved them!

Defiantly a fun weekend event if you’re ever at a loose end or visiting Christchurch and it’s nice to not have it altered by the aftershocks!

In our family birthday season is May, June and July, it get’s hectic and we have a lot of birthday cake!

First the celebrations kick off with my BIL’s birthday in mid May and carry on through to Grace’s Birthday in mid July, we have family or friend’s birthdays on at least a fortnightly basis pretty much through out those months. Doesn’t leave much time to get bored over Winter!

On Friday we celebrated Maddi’s third birthday. I can’t believe the girls are turning three!!

We spent the day going to MacDonald’s for lunch and the girls had a good play in the play land. Then home where a few little friends visited for afternoon tea. That evening we had a family fish n chips dinner with cake and pressies. Was a very long but enjoyable day and I know the girls had fun playing with Maddi’s new toys. My sister created this cool marble cake covered in chocolate ganache with pink fondant circles for Maddi.

Now we go on to Craig’s birthday coming on Monday and mine later in the month before all the plunket coffee group kids turn three along with Grace.

Some may remember the Teddy Bear’s Picnic theme last year, it was such a hit and I enjoyed putting it all together so this year we are having a “pinktastic” tea party theme (see above) for Grace’s 3rd birthday. I’ve been raiding the Asian cheap shops (gosh how I love those shops for party planning!) in search of all things pink and here is the stash. Looking forward to it all coming together.

Anyhow my little munchkin is feeling much better today and wants to bake so we are off to fill up the tins.. chocolate cupcakes with pink icing is on the list! hehe

Lucky I have photo’s of creativity to share as I have no photo’s from our long weekend. It was dismal and boring! Grace and I came down with colds, hers much worse than mine unfortunately. So we spent the long weekend tucked up at home watching a lot of TV/movies and getting cabin fever. Thanks to my wonderful husband for looking after us though. He also spent time occupying Grace so I did manage a few hours of scrapping to complete the Queen’s birthday challenges over at Scrappin Patch.

I didn’t give the photo challenge ago, to time consuming for me. I did however get the two scrapping challenges completed which was great.

First up there was a multi photo challenge where you had to use at least three photos and some masking, paint/glimmer mist and ribbon or fabric. You also had to include a “Royalty” theme in the layout.

I found these photos of Grace having a tea party that I have wanted to scrap for AGES! Tea parties were on the list as “Royalty” themes.

I used a doily as a mask and dabbed pink paint over to give the lacy effect. The ribbon is the little white flower border.  I used my new Martha Stewart lace doily punch and Stella Rose clear doily stamps, although you can’t really make them out in the photo, it’s the silver circle on the pink. I was amazed at how clear they stamp, it stamped all the intricate doily details on them.

Then they had a blind scrap challenge where you had to follow exact instructions and complete a layout. There was a huge list of components to use, I’m pretty sure I included them all correctly but it was challenging!

Then I realised I’ve created some other layouts over the past few weeks and had never got around to photographing them and sharing them so here goes.

This was completed using a Page-maps sketch, always great for inspiration!

It’s photos of Grace’s first flying fox ride. I was amazed at how brave she was, I would never had given her a go on it but her Auntie and Uncle got her flying down on it and she loved it. The Echo Park playground papers have been great for scrapping park photos.

This one was completed ages ago for a challenge at Scrappin Patch but I completely forgot to photograph and load it for the challenge, oops! I used bubble wrap to stamp the background and doodled on the photograph and made some cool ribbon pleats. Simple but fun! Even found a sticker that said “Graceful”.

This one I completed at the last Scrappin Patch Friday night crop. I saw these cupcake papers from My Minds Eye and knew they would work perfectly with this photo of Maddi and Grace. Maddi came to play recently on one rainy day and we decided to bake some pretty pink cupcakes which the girls helped bake then decorated. I also found that my MM Slice cuts out the cute wee teapot and tea cup, how cool! I used some Prima packaging cut up for the doily and found a wee sticker that said “baby cakes”.